Description

In the year 2010 video games have evolved from consoles to virtual reality playing machines. The only problem is computer viruses still exist and can wreak havoc on your mind. This is the premise of Firestarter, a first person shooter named after the virtual reality machine. The virus infected game has trapped your consciousness and you must complete your virtual reality game within 48 virtual hours to free yourself.

You can choose from six different characters to play as with some being an Agent - a female with excellent acrobatic skills, a Gunslinger - a male with good reaction and great accuracy, a Cyborg - a heavily armored player with the skill to restore his armor and a Mutant - a four armed humanoid with the ability to fire with all four arms. Each character can improve his/her skills (27 total) by gaining experience points on completion of objectives in missions. Skills range from learning - increased experience points to vampire - conversion of monster damage to player health. A unique skill is vandalism in which the player receives extra experience points for brutally killing a monster or desecrating dead bodies.

Gameplay consists of 16 levels broken down into several episodes with each episode objective being different as in killing a certain amount of enemies or surviving for a limited time before the door to the next episode opens. There are 19 different types of weapons from your typical assault rifle to the mighty mortar firing 7 types of shells in which to slay the 20 different enemies from demons to symbiont's. In each episode you must (or game over) find and pick up artifacts within a certain amount of time. Artifacts range from invisibility to terminator where the monster targeted by this artifact will become the #1 enemy and all other enemies will attack it until death.

Choose from single player campaign (from one level to the next) or instant game where you can select a single map to play with your character from the campaign mode. Multiplayer modes include classic deathmatch and cooperative play to hunting - several players on one map with one monster to kill, first one to kill it wins and slaughter - players fight non-aggressive re-spawning stealth mimer's to see who can kill the most.

Included in the game is software to benchmark the game on your computer.